Spy Wars: I have space, but I choose to work alone

After the Chinese Air Force achieved an unprecedented victory, the Japanese Air Force adjusted its combat rules and once again cleared out all the Chinese near its own airport.

Due to the extreme confidentiality measures, the Chinese side never took any advance warning of the Japanese bombing and only relied on manned air defense posts to reduce some casualties.

Therefore, the Japanese Air Force did not suspect that their air-to-ground communication code had been leaked. They just thought that the Military Control Commission had planted an intelligence team near the airport, exposing the number and time of take-off of fighter planes, allowing the Chinese Air Force to ambush them in advance.

On the other hand, the Japanese army strictly maintained the standard number of escort fighters in subsequent bombing operations, and even when fighters went on individual missions, they tried to maintain a certain scale.

While the battle was raging along the Yangtze River in Madang, bloody battles were also taking place in the Dabie Mountains outside the northern part of Ezhou.

Fujin Mountain is a fulcrum of the northern remnant of Dabie Mountains. To the west is the northern gateway of Ezhou. To the southwest, you can go directly to Ezhou along the Dabie Mountains passage through Macheng. It has been a battleground for military strategists in the Dabie Mountains since ancient times.

If the Japanese invaders really captured Fujin Mountain, the northern area of Ezhou would be undefensible, and the National Army could only rely on its own strength to resist the mechanized corps of the Japanese Army on the vast plains in northern Ezhou.

Therefore, both the Japanese and nationalist armies realized the importance of Fujin Mountain and dispatched their most elite troops.

The Japanese army dispatched the 17th and 13th two veteran Type A divisions out of the 16 regular divisions. Each division was of a size of people and was fully equipped with infantry, cavalry, tanks, and artillery.

The National Government dispatched the 71st Army to garrison Fujin Mountain.

The 71st Army was also an elite force of the National Army at the time. It was composed of two German-equipped divisions, the 36th Division and the 88th Division. However, at this time, the 88th Division had lost all its elite troops after the Battle of Shanghai and the Battle of Nanjing. It can be said that the task of defending Fujin Mountain was almost entirely entrusted to the 36th Division.

September 1938, 9, Fujinshan front.

The tenth day that the 36th Division held Fujin Mountain.

The commander of the 26th Brigade of the Japanese Army, Tokushige Numata, who had been unable to capture the mountain for a long time, issued a military order and personally led all the troops to launch another Banzai charge towards Fujin Mountain.

After a round of air bombing and rapid attacks by large-caliber howitzers, the civil engineering works that were originally temporarily repaired instantly became a silent and flat sand.

But as the explosions ended, heads wearing German M35 helmets popped out one after another from every corner and entered the position under the command of the surviving officers.

"Captain, the Japs are coming again!"

Before the commander of the 36th Division defending this position could fully recover from the dizziness caused by the explosion, he heard the soldiers' urgent warnings.

He slapped himself three times, but only two of them hit his face. However, the brief pain made him clear his mind.

He raised the telescope hanging on his chest and looked in the direction indicated by the soldier. He saw densely packed Japanese soldiers with diapers tied on their heads, holding bayonets, and rushing towards the position in neat formation with a momentum of ignoring everything.

Looking back, the position had been razed to the ground and there was no place to defend it. It was about to be lost.

He gritted his teeth, took off his shirt, and with his bare chest, he picked up the rifle of the dead soldier beside him, quickly installed the bayonet, and shouted:

"Follow me, everyone with a dick!"

After saying that, he was the first to rush out of the trench which had become a short ditch.

A moment later, countless shirtless soldiers with bayonets in hand jumped out of the trenches behind him.

Relying on several large-scale hand-to-hand combats with bloodshed, the 36th Division barely managed to hold its position, but it was also at the end of its strength.

At the 36th Division Headquarters, Division Commander Chen Duan received the Military Commission's order to retreat. Originally, this should have been the best news for the soldiers fighting on the front line, but this time it was a little different.

"Retreat? Why?" a regiment commander shouted angrily.

"We have held on for ten days and have completed the blocking mission," said division commander Chen Duan.

The head of the regiment in charge of the main position threw his military cap to the ground, revealing his head that was wrapped like a dumpling. His two eyes, filled with anger, peeked through the gaps in the gauze, furious and out of control:

"We won't retreat even if we have completed the task. We have lost so many of our men here to defend the position. We cannot just give the position to the enemy for nothing!"

Another commander, whose arms were hanging around his neck and whose face was blackened by gun smoke, also waved his pistol and shouted:

"Whoever wants to retreat can do so! I want to stay with my brothers!"

All the officers in the headquarters, including several radio operators, stood up and shouted:

"Whoever wants to retreat can do so! We won't retreat!"

The commander of the 36th Division had tears in his eyes and advised in a sad voice:

"There are more than 36 brothers in my 36th Division, but less than of them are left. Shouldn't we leave some fire for the th Division?"

That night, the 36th Division, which had defended its position for ten days and nights, evacuated the Fujinshan blocking position under the cover of darkness.

从9月2日至9月11日，德械36师在富金山下整整抗住了日军两个甲种师团长达10天的全力进攻，1万多人的部队仅剩800余人成功撤退，剩余的全部血洒紫金山。

However, the 36th Division's perseverance bought precious time for the second and third lines of the National Army's defense, and bought time for the strategic deployment of the entire Ezhou Campaign.

The two elite divisions of the Japanese Army also suffered heavy casualties in this battle. The 13th Division of the Japanese Army had to replenish its troops five times, and the casualties of the two divisions exceeded 5.

In other words, in the Battle of Fujin Mountain, the 36th Division inflicted heavy damage on the Japanese at a cost of almost 1:1.

Unfortunately, after this battle, the German-equipped division became a swan song, and there are no more German-equipped divisions in the world.

This battle also made the arrogant Japanese army realize that if they left the plains where the Japanese mechanized forces could deploy firepower, they would suffer huge casualties if they forcibly attacked the National Army positions that relied on the mountainous terrain for defense.

You should know that the 13th and 16th divisions of the Japanese Army that participated in the war were both permanent heavy armored divisions raised by the Japanese Army with the whole country's strength.

At this time, the soldiers were elite veterans who had served for about five years, representing the peak combat power of the Japanese army.

With such combat power, a 2:1 troop advantage and absolute air firepower, they finally used vicious poison gas bombs (in field combat environments, non-enclosed environments, such as bunkers, fortresses and other buildings, poison gas bombs have limited effects) but still failed to break through the 36th Division's defenses.

In addition, there were heavy losses at the Madang Fortress.

This situation made the Japanese commanders give up the idea of a frontal attack to break through the Nationalist defense.

At the Japanese Army's Ezhou Front Headquarters, the commander of the Japanese 11th Army, Ningji Okamura, pointed to the map and said to Prince Higashikyu, the commander-in-chief of the Ezhou Campaign:

"The Battle of Fujin Mountain and the previous battle of Madang Fortress both showed that a strong attack on a plain that is not suitable for the deployment of our mechanized troops would cause huge casualties to our army."